In this article we’re going to do a headshot retouch to show how capable Lightroom is. Of course for a professional headshot retouch Photoshop is necessary, but Lightroom is also surprisingly capable. We’re going to utilize one of our “Soft Portrait” presets, similar to the one we used in our Color Portraiture with Retouch and Enhancement Tutorial, and then we’re going to utilize our brush presets to make our retouches. The complete written tutorial is below, and you can also watched the video tutorial at the end of this article.

Here’s a sneak peak at what our image will look like before and after the retouch.

Read the Written Tutorial

The first thing we’re going to do is select our “01-10 BASE – SOFT: 11a. Extra Soft – Skin Desat” which will soften the skin by decreasing the Clarity and adjusting the Noise Reduction settings. The preset also adjusted the Red and Orange in our HSL, lowering them slightly so we get desaturated skin tones. We also added a little bit of contrast using the “03-40 ADJUST – SHADOW BLACKS: 43 Darken – Light (+10,-20)” preset. The Tone Curve is set in s subtle “S” shape, giving us a slight contrast boost, and we have our standard amount of Sharpening applied to this photo. We’re going to set our Color Temperature to 4900 and add +0.40 to the Exposure to give the skin a nice bright look. For those that don’t have the Preset System, here are what our Develop Settings look like after our presets and adjustments are applied.

The first brush adjustment we’re going to be making is for her skin. We’re using our “21 Skin Softener” preset, and you can see settings of our brush in the photo below. These settings will smooth skin without destroying skin texture. We want to make sure we’re only applying this brush to the skin, and you can press “O” to bring up the overlay so you can see exactly where the brush is being applied as shown below. You can also delete areas of brush application by holding down “alt on a PC or “opt” on a MAC to erase the adjustments.

Moving on, we’re going to hit “New” to make new brush adjustments, and we’re going to select our “23 Line Diminisher” preset. We want to diminish some of the smile lines and lines under the eyes. This part of the retouch should be subtle, diminishing the lines and not removing them completely. Once again, you can see the brush preset settings and the area of affect in the image below.

Now we’re going to hit “New” and select the “24 Eye Brightener” preset. We’re going to brighten up the eyes and we want it to be subtle because if the eyes are too bright it will have an abnormal look. The best way to check if eyes are too bright is to simply zoom out to a thumbnail view and check to see if the eyes look like they are glowing or unusually bright based on the surrounding tones.

Furthering our edit on the eyes, we want to brighten up the iris’ to add nice colors to them and to exaggerate some of the nice catch light. We’re using our “25 Iris Enhancer” and we want to make sure we’re only making adjustments on the iris’ and nothing else.

The last brush we’re going to use is for the hair. With our “15 Hair | Lashes” preset, we’re going to pull out some nice color and texture from her hair.

At this point we’re done with our retouches. If you like you can do some additional blemish removal. When doing blemish removal we recommend keeping blemishes that are apart of their look. The last thing we’re going to do is add a Radial Filter with the Exposure set to -0.50.

And now we are left with our final image. Here’s a before and after of our portrait.

Before

After

Watch the Video Tutorial

If you would like to see exactly how all of the settings and adjustments were applied, please watch the video below from the SLR Lounge YouTube Channel.

Post Production Pye
I hate speaking of myself in the third person, haha. I am a Partner and professional photographer with Lin and Jirsa Los Angeles Wedding Photography, and the Senior Editor for SLR Lounge Photography Tutorials. I am passionate about photography as an art as well as my part as an educator in the industry. Subscribe to our YouTube Channel and feel free to hit me up with questions anytime on Facebook.

I really dislike the trend for porcelain skinned portraits. In my eyes it no longer looks like the person.

I have a small mole on my chin. My wedding photographer removed the mole from every photo. I made him re-process every photo putting the mole back. My wife and I wanted photos of our wedding not somone elses!

http://www.photogracy.com Achyut Hatimuria

I think it is a business decision from Adobe to not make Lightroom at per Photoshop when comes to professional retouching.

Thanks for this tutorial.

Virginie

Hi,
I have lightroom 4 and not sure about moving up to 5 yet, but I was wondering if it possible to get the ‘line diminisher’ brush preset if you’re not on LR5?? I’ve been looking everywhere online if I could purchase a brush presets package including this option but I didn’t anything!!
if you have an answer, please share!

Darlene Hildebrandt

Virginie sorry this hasn’t bee answered! If you look at his settings for that brush he’s just lower clarity and sharpness. You can make your own brush presets quick easily. Just set to those numbers and do a save as new brush preset, call it whatever you want. Although I’d highly recommend the upgrade! Two things make it worthwhile for me:
– the radial filter: like the post-crop vignette you can add an edge vignette effect with this but it also gives you the option of changing the position so it can be off centred! You can also add any of the slider affects just like the brush and graduated filter – so you can blur the outside, darken, lighten, lower saturation. AND you can have more than one of them! It’s huge.
– the cloning/healing tool you can now paint with it so you aren’t limited to just a dot – also huge

Richard

Thank you for this tutorial. It’s accelerated my workflow no end. It was excellent – just the right level of detail, accurate and concise.

Some Older Comments

I think it is a business decision from Adobe to not make Lightroom at per Photoshop when comes to professional retouching.

Thanks for this tutorial.

ColBaldySeptember 23, 2013 05:56 pm

I really dislike the trend for porcelain skinned portraits. In my eyes it no longer looks like the person.

I have a small mole on my chin. My wedding photographer removed the mole from every photo. I made him re-process every photo putting the mole back. My wife and I wanted photos of our wedding not somone elses!